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WOMAN (39) JAILED 15YRS FOR SEX WITH MINOR

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NHLANGANO – A 39-year-old woman who had a sexual relationship with a young boy has been sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.


She was aged 37 and the boy was 13 at the time when they first had sexual intercourse. According to the country’s laws, getting intimate with a person under the age of 16 is a serious criminal offence.


The woman was convicted at the Nhlangano Magistrates Court yesterday, where Principal Magistrate Florence Msibi handed down the 15-year custodial sentence. The presiding officer described the incident as shocking.


“You took advantage of this boy’s age. Disturbingly, it was also brought to the court’s attention that you also tried to gag the boy with the threat of death, in the event he told anyone about what was happening between the two of you – watsi utamenta silo sengubo, in vernacular,” recalled the magistrate.
Msibi condemned the woman for the psychological effect her conduct would have on the survivor.


Establishment


The act happened at the woman’s house on multiple occasions while her nightwatchman live-in-lover was at work. It all began around August 2018, when the teenager’s grandmother had left him, together with his three other siblings, at the neighbour’s homestead for her to look after them, while she was away for medical check-ups in South Africa. 


During the first encounter, the woman reportedly asked the unsuspecting boy to share the same bed with her while she prepared another place for the other children to sleep. While the pair was in bed, the woman is said to have communicated in slang to express her feelings: she openly asked the boy to engage in sexual intercourse with her, saying ‘awungitsi shi-shi’.


Information


According to information that was availed in court, at first the young lad simply laughed off the gesture and turned the other direction, but the woman persisted with her unusual request.


This came to a point when she started to fondle the teenager’s private parts until he gave in.
Information gathered by this publication was that after the encounter, the young boy asked the woman about what would happen when her man eventually returned home from his night shift, but the woman boldly told the boy that she was sexually starved since her partner would be away for the whole night and further failed to satisfy her when he came back.


That conversation apparently set in motion an illegal sexual relationship between the woman and the teenager, which thrived mostly when the boy’s sickly grandmother embarked on her frequent trips to South Africa for medical check-ups. 


This reportedly went on until the youngster eventually fell ill. It was the boy’s grandmother who was the first person to realise that the teenager was not well. So, she asked what was wrong and the boy eventually opened up about what was troubling him. Taken aback, she started to dig deep but the boy would not divulge any further information.


It was then that the elderly woman roped in the teenager’s sister and asked her to take him to hospital.
At the health facility, the boy is said to have admitted that he had been sexually active but refused to give the doctor the name of the person he was sleeping with.


When the grandmother heard that he could not identify his sexual partner at the hospital, she started interrogating him further about the subject. This carried on until he finally he mentioned the name of  the same neighbour his grandmother would ask to take care of them whenever she travelled to South Africa for her regular medical check-ups.
It also transpired that the boy had already confided in a few friends and relatives about what used to happen between him and the 39-year-old woman.


Consequence


This prompted the teenager’s grandmother to intensify her probe until some of the people she talked to revealed that the boy had told them about his ordeal.
The matter was immediately reported to the police, who launched an investigation afterwards.
The woman was eventually taken to a police station, where she was subsequently charged with the offence of rape, under Section 3(1) of the Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Act 15 of 2018.


The woman was later taken to court, where she was convicted of the offence. As a consequence, she is expected to spend the next 15 years under the watchful eye of Correctional officers.


Investigation


This is not an isolated incident, as the same court had previously dealt with a similar matter. Recently, police from Gege received a tip-off about an inappropriate sexual relationship between a 24-year-old woman and a 16-yearold pupil and started investigating.


This was apparently after the relationship between the pair started to interfere with the teenager’s learning. It is understood that the boy had begun to absent himself from school whenever he gallivanted with the woman.


Information gathered was that the boy’s parents already knew about the possible sexual relationship between him and the woman. After they were made aware of the boy’s behaviour at school, the parents approached the police.


Investigators discovered that indeed the woman had sought romance with the minor after things didn’t work out between her and the father of her child. She was arrested and further convicted of the offence, which attracted a custodial eight-year sentence.

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